Lisa Dent Gallery has a three person show of paintings and drawings by Adam Longatti, Nadol Pak and Ryan Pierce. Two are recent graduates of local art schools and the third, Longatti, finished his education in '02 from Cal State Fresno. Longatti's handsome, smallish paintings depict California Central Valley agricultural scenes in transition with commercial and residential development intruding upon the bucolic scenes. Pak's crisp drawings look like molecular abstractions at first but closer inspection reveals images of devastated land seen from the air. Pierce's big, juicy paintings narrate Lord of the Flies-like stories of post-apocalyptic scenes and societies. As... Read More

I always get a thrill from the elevator ride up to Lisa Dent's fourth floor gallery overlooking Mission Street. The elevator must be as old as the building. It's the type that has an exterior door and a sliding interior cage, both of which are operated manually. Alarmingly there is a stone tile floor in the elevator--something you might see in a high-end residential bathroom. Visual contradiction aside, "why," I wonder, "permanently increase the burden on this antique machine?" I imagine the cables, pulleys and motor straining under the weight of this hulking old car, plus the stone tile and... Read More

DRINK SAKE ALONE As I sit down to write this review I'm drinking a Pacifico beer, the staple of San Francisco artist Tom Marioni, which brings to mind his artwork "The Act of Drinking beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art." Thirty five years later, the japanese artist Makoto Aida is visiting San Francisco with the exhibition Drink Sake Alone. Social alienation aside, Aida's work in the gallery is not far from the sense of humor floated by the early California Conceptualists like Baldessari and Marioni. Yet Aida is a much wittier incarnation, focused on global concerns and... Read More